Public Relations Workgroup

The Pro Side:

You many not be aware of it, but the most popular movie in the U.S, “Tropic Thunder,” has been the target of boycotts and scathing critiques by groups representing people with intellectual disabilities, such as the Special Olympics, the ARC of America, the American Association of People with Disabilities and the National Down Syndrome Coalition. The movie took in an estimated $16.1 million in ticket sales Aug. 22-24, keeping its number-one box office ranking for the second straight weekend.

     The Washington Post ran a column by Tim Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics, criticizing the picture.

     “People with intellectual disabilities are routinely abused, neglected, insulted, institutionalized and even killed around the world. Their parents are told to give up, that their children are worthless. Schools turn them away. Doctors refuse to treat them Employers won’t hire them,” Shriver wrote, condemning the film. “None of this is funny.”

     Shriver’s right. None of it is funny.

     The Special Olympics is one of many sponsors of a campaign called “Don’t use the R-word,” referring to the trend to use the epithet “retard” frequently in every day speech. The Special Olympics has a page on its website entitled “Ban the Movie, Ban the Word.”

     Patricia E. Bauer, writing in a blog for Disability America, counted 16 uses of the word “retard” or variations of it in one scene of the movie.

     Since its inception four decades ago, the Special Olympics has been dedicated to “changing the lives of people with intellectual disabilities through sport, along with building more inclusive and engaged communities around the world – places where each person, regardless of ability or disability, is accepted and welcomed and where every individual contributes to the strength and vibrancy of the whole.”

     I support the organization’s goals 100 percent.

     I walked into a recent screening of Tropic Thunder at the funky Riverside Cinema in Marine City with my notebook open and my poison pen in hand, ready to pour invective on Ben Stiller, the director and star of the film, for his disparagement of people with intellectual disabilities. I even had a title for my story: “Myopic Thunder,” suggesting that the filmmakers were nearsighted in their mean-spirited parody of people with developmental disabilities. At that point, I had the same disadvantage as the Special Olympics chairman, who noted in his critique of the movie, that “I have not been given the chance to see the movie.”

     This is sort of like condemning the books Catcher in Rye, Tom Sawyer or Origin of the Species as subversive without reading them.

     I found “Tropic Thunder” to be hilarious. It satirizes Hollywood and well-respected war movies such as Apocalypse Now and Saving Private Ryan with a sharper lance than the Scary Movies poke fun at the horror genre, the Airplane movies spoof disaster pictures or Naked Gun films make fun of cop flicks.

     Tropic Thunder never makes fun of a single person with a developmental disability. The much-sited movie-within-a-movie called Simple Jack, starring Ben Stiller’s character – a washed up action star name Tugg Speedman – is not used to disparage real people. The film itself presents Simple Jack as “one of the worst movies of all times.” Characters in Tropic Thunder suggest that the Simple Jack is a shoddy and transparent attempt by Speedman to resurrect his career and shoot for an Oscar by portraying a person with an intellectual disability – ala Tom Hanks in Forest Gump or Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, two pictures largely respected by the disability rights movement.

     In Tropic Thunder, Robert Downey, Jr. plays Lazarus, a character satirizing great method actors like Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro and Hoffman – and the roles played by token black actors in war and action pictures in the 1960s and 70s; think Jim Brown as the sole African American amid a cast full of white actors.

     Lazarus is a white Australian who plays an African American in the Viet Nam movie that’s being shot in Thunder. In preparation for the role, Lazarus undergoes “pigmentation augmentation” to darken his skin. In another words, he’s playing in blackface. The film is not supporting racism any more than its endorsing stigma. It’s satirizing racism and stigma – not the victims of racism and stigma.

     To balance, Downey, Jr.’s role, Brandon Jackson, who is black, plays Alpa Chino – named for white method actor Al Pacino – in the movie.
Speedman obviously looks up to Lazarus and tries to explain how he dove so far into his Simple Jack character that “there were times when I was doing Jack that I actually felt retarded.”

     Lazarus is not impressed. He hates Speedman’s acting. He offers a string of increasingly nasty synonyms suggesting how Speedman must have felt – like an idiot, a moron, stupid, “the dumbest m— f— that ever lived” – until Speedman clearly begins to feel belittled.

     This is hardly an example of a movie stigmatizing people with developmental disabilities. If anything, it briefly allows Speedman to experience the consequences of stigma. Lazarus’ advice to Speedman is the much-quoted, “Never go full retard.” But it isn’t a reference to any kind of mental retardation. It’s an acting reference. His message is that method acting – the technique of immersing yourself in the character you’re playing – is in the end acting, not reality. Don’t truly lose yourself in the role. Hoffman didn’t in Rain Man, says Lazarus; Hanks didn’t in Gump. They acted. These are movies we’re making, he seems to say. Even the great films are fictions.

     Along the way, the movie spoofs a banquet of topics:
  *Animal rights. Speedman accidentally kills his favorite animal, the cuddly Panda, and wears its head on his head;
  *Movie trailers. Three absurd, fake trailers starring Tuggman, Lazarus and Portnoy (Jack Black) precede Thunder.
  *Product advertisements in movie theaters. A pitch for Booty Sweat energy drink and another fake product interrupt the trailers.
  *Australians. Lazarus is the object of all kinds of shrimp-on the-barbie jokes by Alpa Chino.
  *People who live with obesity. Portnoy’s movie trailer is the sequel to “The Fatties” movie trailer);
  * Movies based on “actual events.” Nick Nolte plays Four Leaf Tayback, who wrote the book on which the Thunder is “based.” It turns out the Tayback wears fake hand-hooks – he didn’t get his hands blown off in Vietnam. He had never even been to Viet Nam.
  *Asians. All the Asian characters are portrayed as drug smuggling terrorists. They are also the only characters in the movie who like Simple Jack – because it’s the only movie they’ve ever seen and the only DVD they own.
  *People with addictions. Portnoy’s complaint is heroin and he’s so strung out he eats a bat that ate his junk. If anything, Jack Black’s Portnoy is spoofing Downey, Jr.’s own very public addictions.

     All of these spoofs take place with the larger satire of the Hollywood system. Tropic Thunder turns the Hollywood back on itself and shows in a comedic way its most negative impacts for what they are.

     Tropic Thunder is funny fiction. Look closer. See it for what it is.